Returns to Low-Skilled International Migration : Evidence from the Bangladesh-Malaysia Migration Lottery Program
Many economists believe that the returns to migration are high. However, credible experimental estimates of the benefits of migration are rare, particularly for low-skilled international migrants and their families. This paper studies a natural exp...
Main Authors: | , , |
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Format: | Working Paper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/812241582828192310/Returns-to-Low-Skilled-International-Migration-Evidence-from-the-Bangladesh-Malaysia-Migration-Lottery-Program http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33408 |
Summary: | Many economists believe that the returns
to migration are high. However, credible experimental
estimates of the benefits of migration are rare,
particularly for low-skilled international migrants and
their families. This paper studies a natural experiment in
Bangladesh, where low-skilled male migrant workers to
Malaysia were selected via a large-scale lottery program.
This study tracked the households of lottery applicants and
surveyed 3,512 lottery winners and losers. Five years after
the lottery, 76 percent of the winners had migrated
internationally compared with only 19 percent of the lottery
losers. Using the lottery outcome as an instrument, the
paper finds that the government intermediated migration
increased the incomes of migrants by over 200 percent and
their household per capita consumption by 22 percent.
Furthermore, low-skilled international migration leads to
large improvements in a wide array of household
socioeconomic outcomes, including female involvement in key
household decisions. Such large gains arise, at least in
part, due to lower costs of government intermediation. |
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